With hundreds of different blocks, Minecraft offers a wide variety of building materials. However, the inventory hasn’t evolved much over the years. This can make it difficult to bring everything back home, especially during long building projects, cave tours, or exploration trips. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on the available spaces in your inventory, as there are several other ways to expand your capacity and make the most of the limitations! Let’s explore some tips for organizing your inventory, including the new bundles, which are extremely handy.
Efficient Inventory Organization for More Space
At first glance, the regular inventory seems quite spacious, but you’ll quickly find that the four rows with nine slots each are not always sufficient. Therefore, it’s essential to use this space wisely and create a system to ensure you always have all the important items and tools with you. Decide from the beginning where exactly the most important items belong in your inventory and avoid mixing them up.
The hotbar is for all your tools that you always need in hand. Most players use it for their weapons and tools, food, a water bucket, torches, and possibly rockets for the Elytra. How you arrange these items is up to you. By the way, remember that you don’t always have to scroll! To be faster, you can use the numbers 1 to 9 on your keyboard.
You can also use your off-hand for various purposes. Many players opt for a shield for defense or a totem of undying. For cave tours, torches are always useful, especially in combination with mods like “Dynamic Lighting.”
In the rest of the inventory, you should stock a corner with the following items:
- Wood planks
- Possible arrows
- Iron (as long as you don’t have diamond tools)
- Coal
- Compass and map (for explorations)
- Crafting table
Ender Chest: An Essential Inventory Upgrade
Once you’ve been to the Nether, gathered some blaze powder, and fought Endermen, you can craft an Ender Chest. We highly recommend doing so because this chest is extremely useful for your gameplay.
Although it offers only three more rows of space (like a single chest), the Ender Chest works differently. It’s essentially a cross-dimensional inventory that you can access anytime, anywhere. Even if you don’t have an Ender Chest on you, the contents remain saved in your world. You can craft a new chest using an eye of ender and eight obsidian, and all items will still be available. To prevent losing it, always carry a pickaxe with “Silk Touch.”
Most players use the Ender Chest as a secure place for valuable items, such as found diamonds. It’s also extremely useful as a backup in case you die and lose all your equipment. However, if the space in your Ender Chest isn’t enough, you can perfectly link it with the following item!
Shulker Box: Flexible Inventory Management
After successfully defeating the Ender Dragon (Ender Dragon in Minecraft: Ultimate Guide to Victory) , you can travel to the outer end islands. There, you’ll find end cities, large structures made of purpur blocks and end stone bricks, offering rare loot.
These structures are guarded by shulkers, which drop a shulker shell upon death. Two of these, plus a chest, can craft a Shulker Box. For many advanced Minecraft players, these portable boxes are indispensable and should help keep your inventory organized.
Shulker Boxes also have only 27 slots, but unlike the Ender Chest, each has its own inventory. You can fill them like normal chests, break them, and take them with you. To avoid confusion later, we recommend dyeing or renaming them at an anvil. You can use Shulker Boxes for virtually anything you can think of. Specialized boxes are best, such as for cave tours, Redstone items, or exploration trips.
One limitation of Shulker Boxes is that you can’t stack them inside each other—though that would be nice! Still, they provide much more space and can fit perfectly in Ender Chests or your inventory. Our next item can be stored in Shulker Boxes, offering a new way to organize your inventory.
Bundles: Practical Tool for Beginners
Bundles were announced many years ago but were only recently added to the game. Especially for your early days in Minecraft, they are incredibly practical and serve as a wonderful transition between your regular inventory and endgame solutions like Shulker Boxes.
With just one leather and one string, you can craft a bundle early on, and you can also dye and rename it. It holds only 64 blocks, which can be split into 64 items. For example, you can store 32 cobblestones, 16 flowers, and 16 coal—taking up only one slot with the bundle. For items that stack only to 16 or individually, the bundle fills up more quickly. This applies to signs, eggs, ender pearls, or tools. And of course, you can’t store Shulker Boxes in a bundle—but the other way around is possible!
You can transfer items into the bundle with a right-click. The last 12 items you store will be displayed in a small menu that you can scroll through with your mouse wheel, allowing you to retrieve specific items. The bar shows how full the bundle is.
Bundles are particularly useful for small items in your inventory and can save a lot of space. You can take several with you, and they are great for flowers and other natural items, as well as for a collection of workstations, mob drops, or your fishing catches. If you play as a nomad, without a permanent base, bundles are super practical!
Efficient Minecraft Inventory: Final Thoughts
Even though the inventory in Minecraft may seem small at first, you can do a lot with it. And with items like Ender Chests, Shulker Boxes, or the new bundles, you can keep all your items under control. Rent your own Minecraft server with us and play together with your friends. This way, you can share your inventories and have significantly more space for your adventures!
